


The Hope of Becoming A Memory

by gaslightgallows (hearts_blood)



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Sex, Anal Sex, Back Kink, Bondage, Dream Sex, Dubious Consent, F/M, Ice Play, Memories, Oral Sex, Post-Canon, Regret, Second Chances, Sex, Shower Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-12-26 20:34:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18289754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearts_blood/pseuds/gaslightgallows
Summary: No one is truly dead until he is forgotten.





	The Hope of Becoming A Memory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [deborah_judge](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deborah_judge/gifts).



> This is a repost of an old fic from 2012, which I took down with the idea of reworking it into something original. After several attempts over the years, I've concluded that it isn't going to work; it _needs_ to be B5 fic. And it was one of those rare stories that just _poured_ out of me in the space of 2 or 3 days, and what came out was perfect. Who am I to try and improve upon perfection?
> 
> Written for deborah_judge in response to a fic meme on my old Livejournal, for the prompt: "Delenn/Lennier, after Sheridan dies, on Minbar, SEX. As porny as possible, please." Well, this was certainly the porniest thing I had ever written at the time. Eternal thanks to my long-suffering writing partner [rivendellrose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivendellrose/pseuds/rivendellrose) for her help in sussing out all the threads. 
> 
> If you're over on Tumblr, please consider following me at [gaslightgallows.tumblr.com](http://gaslightgallows.tumblr.com/) for more fic, reblogs about writing, and lots of randomness. Thank you for reading and especially for commenting. Comments are love. ♥

  _"One lives in the hope of becoming a memory."  
_ _– Antonio Porchia_

* * *

Delenn dreamed of Lennier, from the day he left to the day John died, and beyond. Neither often nor rarely, but steadily, every few nights as regular as the moons' track across the sky, he would creep unbidden into her mind while she slept with her arms around her chosen husband or dozed with her infant son at her breast. Sometimes silent and reproachful, his lips tight and a pointed look in his dark eyes, as he always was when she did something he could not in good conscience agree to but inevitably went along with anyway. Other times silent and comforting, his hand light and sure on her shoulder as she faced some great unseen trial. Always at the edges of her consciousness and always silent, just as he had been before. His words had often been wise beyond his years, but Lennier's silences had always seemed so much more profound, as though his unspoken prayers and meditations and considerations were meant solely for Delenn, in whatever way she cared to use them.

As the years crept by, and the Alliance grew and her son grew up and John grew old, Delenn found herself listening closely to the rare moments of silence in her days. She refused to give up hope that one day Lennier would be found, that he would make his way back to her and they could begin to build something new out of the pieces of closeness they had once shared, even after news reached her that he had been killed in the Telepath War, his body destroyed in an explosion. How could she believe such a story, even as the anniversary of the end of that war and the date of his passing came and went? How could she give him up when she still heard him in the unmoving stillnesses, still saw him in her dreams?

In spite of everything, he had kept his vow: he had never left her. She had forgiven him a thousand times over, in her heart, for the mistake that tore them apart, and tried to put his memory aside until a time when she could take it out and remember him without the deep, lingering ache his departure had left in her.

Lennier would not let her forget him.

He came to Delenn in dreams after John died, more frequently than ever, and she welcomed the old pain of his presence as a balm over the newer pain of John's passing.

At first the dreams were sweet, old memories of Lennier overlaid with the patina of age. Sitting and praying with him, sharing simple meals in her quarters, strolling through Babylon 5 with her hand on his arm, in corridors and among people that seemed far cleaner and friendlier than she knew them to have been. It was a pleasure to dream of him; it made the nights pass quickly, the days seem brighter, the years slip away, one after the other. Her memories of Lennier gave her strength now, like those of John and Dukhat and all the friends and loved ones who had gone before her.

And then one night, the dream of Lennier turned to her with such a fearsome look on his face as she had never seen before. "This is _not_ how it was, Delenn," he said, the image speaking for the first time. His soft voice was angry, reproachful. "You know this."

Delenn felt something inside her twist. She had not heard his voice in decades, and to hear him say this, of all things...

Lennier held out his hand, arm outstretched, palm up, as he had once before. "I am waiting for you," he said calmly.

She took his hand because she had no other choice, because to deny him would be a lie and she could no longer lie to herself. Not about this.

His long fingers were warm and smooth, the hands of a scholar, and strong around hers. He drew her slowly forward until they were chest to chest. Delenn reached up and touched his face, feeling the familiar contours of his cheek and jaw, and the place where his crest met his temple. She brushed a thumb tentatively over the corner of his mouth. Without knowing why, she was frightened. Frightened... of Lennier?

_"Are you afraid of me?"_

_"Yes."_

He dipped his head quickly and kissed Delenn with a hunger that startled her. Suddenly the Zocalo was gone; they were in her old quarters on Babylon 5, before she had married and joined her home with her husband's. Their clothes were gone and Lennier's mouth was hot on her throat. "Don't forget me," she heard, his voice quietly pleading, surrounding her. "Don't forget me."

Delenn gasped, and caught his head and forced him to look at her. "I have never forgotten you."

"But you did not want to remember me like this."

Again the twisting feeling in her stomach, a burning made of shame and lust in equal measure. "Lennier—"

He stopped her mouth with his before she had fully decided what to say, and pushed her back against the bed. "Remember me as I was," he growled softly, taking her in one smooth, hard motion that made her bones ache, "the way you wanted me."

Delenn woke with his name on her lips, a flood of sore wetness between her thighs and the imprint of his body weighing her down. She looked around wildly, still half-dreaming, and thought she saw him in the shadows of her bedroom. "Lennier?" she whispered, and listened to the silence for the sound of his voice... but Lennier was dead, long years ago in the Telepath War. Twenty years ago that very day, she realized, feeling the familiar heaviness settle on her. Dead for honor and love, and in the end, for a little peace of his own. The peace his heart had so long denied him.

The peace his memory now denied her.

* * *

_She wants the handsome boy from the moment she sees him in customs. He is wide-eyed at his first time away from Minbar, awkward, sweet, polite, eager to please. Younger than she is and innocent, but for all that, there is an air about him. He twitches promisingly when touched, as though not sure how to react, even to so simple a touch as her hand on his arm. Delenn is not one to prefer virgins, but she can't help but smile when she thinks about how he might react if she touched him in other ways._

_She manages to restrain herself for a month, to let him get used to the newness of the station and his duties. Lennier isn't at all shocked when she leans over their paperwork one evening and kisses him, only a little shyly surprised that she has come to want him so quickly. He must have been apprised of her history, Delenn thinks, touching his smooth face, before he accepted the posting._

_The Minbari are a secretive people, but among them, sex is an open secret. It is an accepted custom for men and women to take their colleagues and subordinates to their beds, and for teachers to take adult students as lovers, so long as all parties are willing. During the War and after, both on the Council and off, Delenn is known for her reputation in that regard, but no more than another might be said to enjoy music or fine dining: it is merely an appetite that she possesses, that needs to be indulged from time to time._

_She has been on Babylon 5 for nearly two years. There are no other Minbari of her rank or station on board, none whom she might trust enough to bring to her bed. But this beautiful young man has been sent to her, to serve and to share her secrets. And she is tired of being alone._

_"Do you have any objections?"_

_"No."_

_"Are you nervous?"_

_"No, Sat—Delenn." She just smiles at him, and lays two light fingertips on the back of his wrist. He blinks and remembers to breathe. "Yes," he admits, his voice dropping to a whisper._

_"Do you trust me, Lennier?"_

_And though he has little reason to, he says "Yes."_

_Delenn clasps his hands reassuringly, and leads him into her bedroom. They disrobe slowly; Delenn wants to give him time to decline, if he wishes, and as badly as she needs a man in her bed, she has no desire to hurry through the motions. This night—perhaps the first few nights, if he is willing to return to her—will be for learning about his pleasures._

_His hands are long and lean and smooth, and they are sure enough in their movements, even if his cheeks and chest are flushed and his breathing ragged with the thrum of the male's desire. The sound curls its way into her blood, pounding in her veins and nearly deafening her. Delenn steps into the circle of his arms and takes his wrists, pressing them to her back, to where bright blue splashes of pigment flare out from beneath the small, diamond-shaped scales that protect her spine, scales that have gone soft and silken as her arousal grows. He touches her hesitantly, and she gasps across his chest._

_Lennier steps back a pace, his hands still caught in hers, and bows his head. He has to force out the words he wants to say; his low rasping growls make speech difficult. "I give to you my unfinished body, that in your embrace I may become whole."_

_They are the words of a student to a teacher, as the two embark on a sexual journey, and they make Delenn feel tender of him. She has never made that invocation herself; she was not virgin when she went to Dukhat. (Their first time was on a desk in his study, a hard, hungry copulation brought on by too many weeks of dancing around one another. He said afterward that he was too old to be making love on tabletops, that the next time would be in his bed. In fact, in all the times that followed, Delenn could recall only one night of passion spent in Dukhat's bed. The rest were on every other piece of furniture in his quarters, on the floor, against the walls, and once on the floor of the Grey Council chamber, where the fear of discovery and the stars literally wheeling around her as she rode him made for the most glorious sex of her life.)_

_She settles him comfortably on her bed, admiring his body. Lennier's studies in the temple have not been focused solely on the mind and soul. "You are beautiful," Delenn tells him, and sees a flash of something dark and warm, deep in his eyes. What it is, she has no name for, but she can feel the heat of it in the back of her throat. She wants to see it again. She watches him closely as she removes the last of her clothing, but Lennier's face is frozen in awe._

_But when she kneels between his legs, presses her hands flat on his stomach and slides them slowly up his chest, he thrums hard and writhes beneath her, hissing gently. Smiling, Delenn dips her head and licks a trail from the base of his **dun'Etana** , the bone plate in his sternum, over his lean stomach, down to the flat plane of his groin. Unable to stop himself, Lennier arches against her, gasping. The cerulean splash on his abdomen is hot enough to make the air above it shimmer. Delenn happily singes her lips, caressing the skin with her mouth._

_He lets out a sound like a whimper. "Please," he barely has enough coherence to gasp, reaching blindly down to her. "Please..."_

_Delenn clasps his hands for a moment, resting her forehead against his thigh. "Shall I continue?" She asks the question teasingly, but she needs his answer._

_"Yes... please, Delenn..."_

_She turns her attention to the flat of his groin. The body of a Minbari male is beautiful and smooth, and he keeps his charms hidden. There is no external organ, only a genital slit not so unlike her own, from the outside. Gently, Delenn strokes a fingertip along the line of his slit; Lennier presses his lips together, hard. Slipping first one finger and then a second inside the top of his opening, Delenn seeks for and finds his rapidly lengthening organ, slim and slick with his secretions. Moving slowly, she bends her head and presses her lips to his slit, licking his inner walls delicately, relishing the taste of him. His shaft moves quickly out of its protective hiding place, long and thin to reach deep when he is buried inside her. He hardens, with a quick, indrawn breath, as soon as he touches her tongue._

_Delenn grasps his hands again, willing him to finish, but from the way his muscles are straining, she realizes that he will not, not like this. She leaves off with reluctance, glides up and presses against Lennier, pulling his arm around her, draping a leg languidly over his thigh. "You must learn to let go," she murmurs, smiling against his crest. Her hand teases his shaft a moment or two longer, stroking from base to tip. Then, with the delicate surety of many years of practice, she angles her hand down and slides her fingers into his slit, below the penis this time. Lennier gasps sharply as his flesh stretches; the arm around Delenn's back is like an iron band—he is stronger than he looks. His other hand clenches the bed, spasming as he fights to breathe. His deep brown eyes are wide with ecstasy and terror at the things she is doing to him, the things she is making him feel._

_Her fingers nudge the soft skin of his scrotum, hidden safely away. She cups the warm, heavy testicles, massaging them gently. Lennier stiffens, his face contorts in a silent rush, and he doesn't even feel Delenn coming at the same moment, grinding out her climax against his thigh._

_She holds his trembling body close. His expression is still one of wonderment mingled with fear. "Are you afraid of me?" Delenn murmurs._

_He smiles for the first time that evening, not a tremulous thing but a hot, bright smile that makes her mouth water. "Yes."_

_His thighs and stomach are sticky with their fluids, but he is still hard. A few more light touches have him groaning aloud, and Delenn straddles his hips and takes him inside her, deep and slow, so that he can feel her surrounding him. She leans forward, stretching herself out along his chest, and he reaches for her willingly, seeking out the burning blue patches along her spine and the scales that run down her back like smooth, cool water. Lennier turns his face up to hers eagerly, seeking her mouth, and she gives herself over to him, cradling his head with his cheek against hers, his hands holding her hips to steady her as he thrusts._

_This time he feels her climax, and his cry of release is louder than hers._

* * *

Dawn found Delenn on the terrace, waiting for the spring sun to rise. She had been there most of the night, thinking about her most recent dream of Lennier and remembering him as he had been when she first knew him.

It was pointless to deny the truth of what his voice in her dreams accused her of: she had deliberately tried to forget much of what had passed between them, before the wars and John and her transformation. It would have been not only painful to dwell on that part of her past, but dangerous as well. Much as she had loved the husband she chose, as intimately as he had come to know and respect the culture he had married into... He would not have understood. He had suspected at one time, and his behavior in those days was proof enough that he would never have understood her intimacy with Lennier.

There had been no choice but to put aside what she and her aide had shared. No choice for either of them, for any of them. Only fate.

In the distance, Delenn heard the bells ringing in the temples of Tuzanor, and more faintly, the chanting of the acolytes as they rose from their beds for the first offices of the morning. Inaudible on their own, together the voices of the young men and women of the city were impossible to ignore.

And in the silence that followed, a voice equally penetrating and insistent.

* * *

_After their first coupling, Delenn isn't truly surprised when Lennier chooses to continue accepting her overtures and come to her again. It is her own immense gratitude that is startling. She had become fond of the boy, and far quicker than she ever expected to._

_His devotion and dedicated service are professional, spiritual, part of his job description--they are why he was sent to her, after all. It is his obvious pleasure in his service to her, his willingness to perform any task, no matter how distasteful or mundane, that touches her the most. He does not think like a child, nor is he simple-minded. He has only been taught, all his life, as she had been, long ago, that to serve is the greatest calling that any Minbari can aspire to, and a reward in itself. Delenn has rarely seen anyone take that philosophy into their breath and bones as Lennier does._

_It make her less strict of a teacher than she ought to be, and less careful, perhaps, of monopolizing his time. When by rights Lennier should be exploring the station and cultivating the friendship of the other Minbari residents, Delenn keeps him nearby, going over legal policy and diplomatic questions, testing his judgment in matters of economy and politics, quizzing him on history and languages (areas where, she must admit, he exceeds her in aptitude), reading, praying, studying..._

_Delenn makes a priority of classifying sex under 'study' rather than 'service.' She is too fond of her aide to ever want their liaisons to be a duty to Lennier, no matter how comfortable he is becoming in expressing his enjoyment of her touch, her lips on his, her body engulfing him._

_He takes his studies very seriously, so Delenn finds ways to startle his out of his seriousness, to play with him. When there is a law or injunction Lennier has trouble grasping, she makes him copy out the text, with ink and a soft brush, on her naked body. She lies indolently on her bed while he copies, critiquing his work. "You must write more neatly than that," she teases, "if you are to read it back to me."_

_Lennier's hand trembles dangerously, but he says nothing, only takes a deep breath and forces calmness into his limbs, continuing to write, flashing her a look from his dark eyes that holds such promise, Delenn has to bite back a groan._

_She lusts after that look, that brief glimpse of hungry intensity so at odds with his sweet, patient ways. It hints at a passionate side to her placid aide, a side that Delenn wants to grab with both hands and drag into the light. She sees that piece of Lennier's soul only rarely; he knows what is within himself, she thinks, and will not let it out. Perhaps he believes it would be wrong for her to fear him with the same adulation as he fears her._

_He finishes his copying and sets the ink and brush aside. Delenn folds her arms behind her head. "Now. Read it out to me."_

_Lennier reads the text aloud, twice. Delenn asks him questions about the information, absently tracing the fingertips of one hand down her ribs, over her hip, over her stomach. She toys with the soft skin of one breast, enjoying the hitch in his voice and the tension in his neck as he answers her. Smiling, Delenn gestures to a bottle on the bedside table. Lennier pours some of the chemical cleanser onto a soft cloth and carefully wipes away the ink from her chest and stomach and thighs. She sees his nostrils flare; despite her calm demeanor, she is wet and ready for him and he can smell that readiness. He sets aside the cleanser, folds his hands tightly behind his back, and recites the text from memory, without hesitation or error._

_And that is the point of the exercise. If he can remember the lesson in spite of Delenn's teasing and the raging of his own body, he will always remember it._

_At Delenn's smile of approval, he drops to the bed, melting into her embrace. "Well done, Lennier," she murmurs, pushing the jacket from his shoulders._

* * *

Delenn went about her business. She was still President of the Interstellar Alliance, with all the duties and decisions of that office, and although Susan Ivanova had taken over the day-to-day operations of the Rangers, Delenn was still _Entil'zha_. She could not spend all her waking hours remembering Lennier and the way things had once been.

But his presence trailed after her. His name seemed to be on everyone's lips that day; the older Rangers, people who had trained with Lennier, told wistful stories of him in the mess hall. The _sechs_ invoked his name in classes as a man whose drive and dedication were to be admired and aspired to. He was in the ancient buildings and the new hangar bays, on the training fields, in the libraries and gardens.

And Delenn wondered, bending to her work, if he had always been there and she had never noticed before.

Before she retired that night, she lit a candle and placed it in her bedroom window, the one that overlooked the garden. In the years following Lennier's departure, she had performed this small ritual every night, whispering his name and a prayer of protection, hoping that somehow, somewhere, there was a light to guide Lennier as he had once guided her. She had neglected the candle in recent years; now, she lit the taper and spoke the words of the prayer with conviction. "May you always have a candle to light the darkness, Lennier...and a star to show you the way home."

She watched the flame as she fell into sleep.

When she opened her eyes again, Lennier was standing beside her bed, in her bedroom in the president's house in Tuzanor. He was dressed in a Ranger's uniform, and looked much the same as he had the last time she saw him, before... before he had left. Delenn rose slowly; for a moment, she was unsure if she was still asleep, until Lennier held out his hand, showing her a flame flickering in his cupped palm. "Thank you," he smiled. "I have missed this."

Her heart ached to see his smile, quiet and secretive and long-suffering. "Did it help you find your way home?" She needed to know, whatever the answer.

Lennier slowly closed his fingers around the tiny flame, extinguishing it. "I was under the impression that I never truly left."

Far in the distance, Delenn heard the bells of Tuzanor, ringing for morning prayers. That it was the middle of the night seemed to matter very little, just then. "I never meant to hurt you."

"To hurt me? No. But to forget me? That, I think you intended."

"I did not—" Delenn insisted, but even she heard the desperation in her voice."

"You did not want to remember all that we shared," Lennier snapped, "because you were afraid."

"I have never been afraid of you, Lennier."

His dark eyes burned.

He crushed Delenn beneath him, ravaging her mouth and tearing at her nightclothes. His thrumming crashed over her like a wave of fire, igniting her blood, and she clawed at the thick brown cloth that kept his skin from hers, wanting him, _needing_ him, and nothing else mattered except taking him inside her and devouring him whole.

The candles turned his body to gold and his eyes to coals. His lean hands gripped her tight enough to bruise, and all about him was light and life. He tangled his hands in her graying-brown hair; Delenn pressed her palm to the flat of his groin, cupping him hard. He growled into her mouth, and the sound was delicious. Her palm slipped up and down his dripping member. Lennier took her wrist, brought her hand up to their faces. His burning eyes never left hers, as he licked his juices from her hand and then kissed her hungrily, opening his mouth so that she could taste him.

He twisted her onto her stomach. The transformation had taken away the long, sinuous line of scales that had once protected her spine, but her _ren'helasae_ were still there and he fell upon them, nipping at the flaring cerulean patches that had begun to darken into the indigo of maturity since they had last been together, drawing his fingers tantalizingly up the line of her buttocks. Delenn rocked back against his hand, moaning.

He took her as she had always wanted him to, hard and deep, so suddenly that it jerked a cry from her throat that was as much of shock as it was of delight. The bone plate in his chest rasped at her unprotected back as he bent over her; his lips whispered taunts to her vertebrae. "He could not love you like this. Only me."

Delenn whimpered, pushing back against him. He fit inside her in all ways as he had always done, as though created for that one purpose. He pulled her up onto her knees, his hot dry chest against her sweating, smoldering back, and she could feel every one of his thrusts travel up her spine like a blade.

His fingers rubbed against her wetness and she came hard, but he did not stop, ripping orgasm after orgasm from her body until she would have collapsed, but for his arms around her.

She gasped and shuddered, unable to move her limbs. Through the haze, she heard his soft chuckle. "I always could outlast you," he reminded her, soothing her back where his _dun'Etana_ had rubbed it raw.

Lennier laid her down gently, so that they were chest to chest, and slipped inside her, resting between her thighs as one who belonged there.

An overwhelming sense of peace settled over Delenn. She closed her eyes, letting his presence enfold her... But when she opened her eyes again, Lennier was gone. A faint smudge under the heavy window shades told her it was nearly dawn.

Delenn sat up and grimaced. Her lower body was suffused with a bone-deep ache, and her bed was soaked. Gingerly, she dragged herself into the bathroom. Twisting and turning before the mirror, she could see none of the marks that the man in her dream had left on her skin, but she could feel them. She could _feel_ them, the place on her back where his sternum had scraped and the places where his teeth had nearly drawn blood.

She touched carefully between her legs. The flesh was over-sensitive, as though she had been making love all night in truth, and there were still the remnants of climax on her thighs.

Delenn closed her eyes and lifted her fingers to her mouth. For a moment, she imagined she could taste his seed.

* * *

_Lennier is a diligent student in all things. He learns quickly whatever Delenn cares to teach him, and even some things that she, with all her previous experience and all her past partners, has never tried before. His technique in bed improves, but in most other aspects he remains shy, almost innocent; his expressions during sex are the same mixture of physical joy and awestruck fear. In a way, Delenn is glad. The more she comes to know her aide and lover, the more she understands that his natural desire to serve threatens to subsume the pleasure he takes in her touch. He is careful always to see that Delenn is gratified in almost whatever fashion she requires (once or twice she suggests things which he politely declines to take part in), but she worries that he is neglecting his own needs._

_"I never wished for you to see it as your duty to please me," Delenn says, restraining his arms with strong leather cuffs at his wrists. The cuffs are attached to metal fiber ropes, bolted to the wall. The Worker who had installed them that morning had doubtless been amused by the maintenance request. "What of your own pleasures?"_

_Lennier tests the strength of the cuffs, and smiles. In his eyes is a little of that intensity of feeling that Delenn hungers for so badly, but it is buried deep. "Service is its own pleasure." He is only quoting doctrinal tenets again, but as always, the words on his lips sound like the holiest of personal vows._

_"So long as it is what you desire."_

_The flare in his eyes flickers closer to the surface._

_Delenn sets to work, drawing the thrums and moans slowly from his throat as she sets his body alight with lips, with teeth and hands. His arms strain against his bonds but the cuffs hold, and through half-closed eyes he watches her run her nails lightly over his stomach and thighs, teasing his groin and just barely touching his opening. She takes her time in coaxing him out, and takes him into her mouth with no intention of letting him go until he has finished, until he has spent himself and she has swallowed every last drop. It is a challenge; his thighs are hard beneath her hands. He does not want to end like this._

_Frustrated, Delenn rises up and takes him inside her. "Your endurance begins to annoy me," she tells her aide, only half-joking, stretching out and pressing her breast to his chest, sliding her hands flat beneath his shoulders for balance. "Do not make me order you to orgasm," she murmurs, to tease him._

_Lennier thrusts his hips suddenly upward, catching her off-guard. For a split second he fills her completely, and the surprise of being so close so quickly sends a jolt through Delenn that is like lightening. "You first," he says, his cheeks red with his own boldness but his eyes and smile so bright and hot that for a moment, Delenn is blinded. She grinds against him and he responds eagerly, taking the rhythm from her and giving it back until she is gasping out her climax across his chest._

_"I think," Delenn says, when she regains control of her voice, "that you are showing off."_

_"Forgive me, if my actions offended."_

_The words slip out unbidden, and Lennier immediately apologizes for his presumption, but Delenn is seized by an urge to giggle. She feels as young as he is. "You do not offend," she assures him, licking at his mouth and keeping just out of his reach, though he strains to kiss her. Delenn thrusts her hips invitingly and hums in a self-satisfied way when he hardens inside her._

_She tries again and again to get him to come but only succumbs herself, until she is shuddering uncontrollably from completion. Falling forward, she releases Lennier's wrists, happy to let him nuzzle her crest and caress her spine gently before he rolls her onto her back. He pushes inside her and sends her over the edge again, but this time he comes with her, throwing his head back and letting out a low, glorious moan. His thrums scour her skin and blood, and in the throes of his pleasure, his face is a divine thing._

_Lennier stares down at her, wide-eyed, breathing hard. Delenn wants to touch his face, but her muscles will not move, so she contents herself with smiling up at him, drowsy and blissful. "You are very beautiful when you climax."_

_He blushes red, bows over her and presses his cheek to hers. His face is hot with the awkward embarrassment of his words and the forwardness of his earlier actions, but his whisper and his warm breath are steady against her ear. "So are you."_

* * *

"Are you all right, Delenn?" Susan asked, following a routine meeting. "You've been looking pretty run down, the last couple of weeks."

Delenn did not look up from the papers she was arranging. Her current aide stood to one side, eyes downcast, practically radiating displeasure. "I have not been sleeping especially well." She straightened and seemed to notice the young man for the first time. "Thank you, Ardenn, you may go."

If possible, Ardenn looked even more put out, but his place was not to question, only to obey. He bowed to Delenn and to Susan and took his leave. Susan watched him go. "Why d'you even have a diplomatic attaché anymore, if you insist on doing his job for him?"

"Because it is proper for someone of my position to have an assistant. I did not ask for him to be sent."

"So send him away."

"That would reflect badly on him," explained Delenn gently, with a lopsided smile to show that she had thought about it, poor reflections on Ardenn notwithstanding. "He is an inoffensive and efficient youth, and normally we work well together. I've simply been out of sorts, of late."

"Trouble sleeping, you said."

"I have been having a great many... uncomfortable dreams."

Susan hesitated. "About John?"

"No..." It startled Delenn to realize just how infrequently she had dreamed about her late husband. But there was no need for her subconscious to dwell on him, or for the universe to put such visions into her head. She thought of John, and missed him, and mourned him daily, as she had once mourned... "Lennier."

Her friend shuffled her own paperwork, pursing her lips thoughtfully. "Delenn, um... it's been almost five years since John left. And more than twenty since Lennier... Well. Maybe you should... you know, get out more? Meet some new people?"

"New men, you mean?"

"Or women. Or any other gender. Anyone."

The suggestion was kindly meant, Delenn knew. "I am touched by your concern, Susan. Truly. David has even mentioned that matter to me, once or twice." Her son's letters home were more delicate about the subject, saying only that he feared she had been alone with her grief for too long, but the object of the messages was the same. "But you do not need to worry about me," she said, touching Susan's sleeve with a smile that cost her a great deal of effort. "I am not alone here. They are with me."

"I know that," the Human woman replied, muttering a little awkwardly as she always did when faced with strong emotions of her own. "But it's not really the same thing. The memories of the dead... You have to let them go. John and Lennier. And not just their memories. It's not healthy to hang on to them... for any of you." Then she snorted. "God, listen to _me_ , giving you spiritual advice."

A different sort of smile spread across Delenn's lips, slow and sad and nostalgic. "Once, a very long time ago, in the ancient times before Valen, we Minbari believed in the finality of death, that it was the end of the soul's journey. In those days, when our ancestors worshipped the souls of their departed, it was said that 'No one is truly dead until he is forgotten.'"

It had been Lennier who had first brought her attention to that forgotten piece of pagan doctrine. He had come across it during his studies on Babylon 5, when his position as aide to the ambassador had given him access to documents and manuscripts of the kind to make a history scholar giddy. Lennier had been so charmed by the old mantra, its poetry and simple piety, he had written it out on her skin, the same line of flowing verse, over and over, and then made love to her without bothering to wipe the ink away, so that the text smeared and blurred and marked them both. It was, she realized with the stabbing clarity of hindsight, an incredibly beautiful and romantic gesture.

And prescient, as Lennier's natural wisdom had sometimes caused him to be.

* * *

"Stop this," she told the man who appeared to her in her sleep that night. She was neither soft nor fond; her voice was steely. "If I am to be punished for the sin of forgetting, then so be it, but do not torment me in this way."

"Torment you?"

"The Lennier I remember would never have acted as you did."

His dark eyes burned with the intensity she had always craved and never been able to keep. "As you wanted me to act."

Stricken, Delenn closed her eyes. "Yes," she admitted, her voice hoarse.

"What do you think I am?"

She shook her head. "It does not matter. Whatever you are... You have my word, I will not deny your memory any longer." She bowed to the image, stately and determined.

Her resolve made Lennier smile, as of old. He pulled her into his arms and kissed her, easy and confident in a way he had never been in life. But his mouth tasted as it always had. That was a thing her body would never forget, no matter how hard her mind tried to, just as it would not forget the thrill of his scholar's hands on her breasts and thighs, reading her with his fingers as he would read the ancient carving of a sacred text.

"Be at peace, Lennier," she murmured, resting her cheek against his, breathing his breath.

"How can I?" he replied, mournfully.

"I have said—"

"It is not me that you're denying."

Delenn looked down at his hands on her body, and where his fingers traced words on her skin, she saw the old lessons written in his blood. "You can't bring me back to life with half a promise." She raised her eyes to see his bare chest, covered in wounds, and three old scars on his right arm.

* * *

_Lennier shares her bed every night now, even on the nights when she is too exhausted or worried to want him to make love to her. It does not matter; she still wants him nearby, and he is glad, in his quiet, contained way, to be near her. Sometimes Delenn thinks that the nights without sex are Lennier's favorite times, when all she wants are his arms around her and the sound of his heart and lungs, the soft prayers he murmurs under his breath, his poignant silences._

_But even though they do not have sex every night... they do still have sex, and more frequently than Delenn ever anticipated. She wants him more than she can ever remember wanting someone before, and the want goes deeper than a simple lust to be slaked every so often. His physical presence is like a sedative. He calms her heart, refreshes and reassures her spirit and helps her to move forward to the task ahead. She forgets that he is young, that he is inexperienced and sometimes ignorant of the ways and cruelties of the world. She forgets that he is her student, her responsibility. He is becoming an equal in her eyes, her ideal of what all Minbari could be like, if only they could rise above their own petty concerns and focus on the good of all._

_A small but stubborn part of her thinks that Lennier is a better person than she has ever bothered to be._

_Delenn knows what is ahead for her. She knows it is coming swiftly, like nightfall in winter. She knows she should send Lennier home._

_Instead, she keeps him close beside her. She prays with him, their thighs pressed together so that she can feel his heat and the solid muscle beneath his loose trousers. She takes her meals with him, though he will not actually eat with her, only finish whatever she leaves on her plate. She lays her hand on his arm as they walk through the station together, and she keeps him in her bed, clinging to him as he sleeps._

_She knows she is being incautious. It is difficult for females of her species to conceive without careful timing but not impossible, and she has had one or two moments in the past few months that made her blood turn to ice in her veins._

_She hunts through the ancient texts and finds herbal preparations to prevent conception. She has Lennier order the ingredients, carefully buried amongst lists of other requests for books and information, materials and foodstuffs and cosmetics from home. She has to be careful; he is a scholar, and acquiring knowledge at an alarming rate. When Delenn has them all in her possession, she sends him on a long errand, so that she has privacy. She prays, and mixes the herbs with her own hands, and against her faith, she takes them—there are things coming on the path ahead that she cannot turn away from. Better to prevent now what she will not be able to undo or ignore later._

_But it takes away none of the guilt wracking her soul._

_That night she begs Lennier to hurt her in their love-making. When he will not, she orders him to. For the first time, he disobeys her, so she hurts him instead, biting and clawing as he moves tenderly over her, her nails gouging marks into his bicep that are deep enough to draw blood. It falls on her face and mixes with the tears she cannot hold back and will not explain._

_She bandages the wound for him, after, and the tears she drops on his skin are the apologies she cannot speak aloud. There is no accusation in the touch of his fingers on her face, no pain or betrayal in the deep brown eyes he lifts up to her. Only understanding, and trust._

_He leads her back to the bed she is coming, guiltily, to think of as 'theirs.' He curls around Delenn as though he can protect her from all that is coming, and she cries herself to sleep against his chest._

* * *

Delenn woke from her dream alone, sobbing. She reached out to the emptiness on the other side of the bed, forgetting there was no one there.

"I'm sorry," she told Lennier when he came to her next. They were not in her bedroom this time, but in the Whisper Gallery, cold kisses of mist swirling around the hems of their white robes, as they stood in the place where he had once acted as her protector and guide. "I hurt you. I deceived you. I used you."

He gave a slow blink of his dark eyes, darker than they had ever been in life, and his smile was painfully gentle. "I know. But then, I let you."

"Can you forgive me?"

He said nothing. Delenn took hold of his robe, gathering the shimmering white cloth and crushing it in her fists. "Tell me!"

"There is nothing to forgive. What you did to me, I accepted. All the pain, all the suffering. It was a gift, Delenn."

"Then why are you _here_? Why make me remember all these things that shame me so much?"

He gazed at her, and in his face there was much of the old reverence that had touched her so greatly, when they were young. "To help you heal."

Delenn's stiff poise wilted. Overwhelmed, she laid her head on Lennier's shoulder, closing her eyes as his arms held her.

* * *

_The scaffold for the triluminary is growing, piece by fragile piece, thin pastel shards of crystal rising inexorably upward, like the skeleton of a new temple in miniature. The delicate clink they make when they touch reminds Delenn of Minbar, and the music the great spires of Yedor make in the short autumn winds. "You do not have to remain," she forces herself to say, her back to her aide. "You could go home to your family, continue your studies..." Lennier's calm silence pricks at her heart. She turns to him and touches his face, for once in complete selfless concern. "There is so much darkness coming, Lennier. To this place, to me. I cannot ask you to walk with me into such a storm."_

_His hand comes up to cover hers. His long, smooth fingers and palm are warm and capable, and for a moment, his pulse and hers synchronize. "With respect, Delenn, how then can you ask me to watch you walk into that storm alone?"_

_"These are not your burdens to bear—"_

_"Delenn. It **is** my burden to serve Minbar, just as it is my duty and honor. Have I not written out the laws and beliefs of our people on you, and taken the imprints of those words on my own body?" There is a light in his eyes that Delenn has never seen before, all the intensity and passion of his lust melded with a higher, more ennobled gleam. "Are we not Minbar, you and I, together?"_

_His words lift a great weight from her. "It is good to know that such high ideals have not yet died out completely," she says, smiling and pressing her hand to his heart._

_The light in his brown eyes seems to dim a little, but his smile, and his firm grim on her hand against his cheek, never waver._

* * *

Her days were still given over to the business of life, of the Alliance and the _anla'shok_ , of Minbar and her friends and family. Her mornings belonged to John, as they always would. But her nights of prayer and meditation, contemplation and sleep, took on a very different tone.

Each night she set the candle in her window and spoke the short prayer quietly, gazing not at the flame but into the depths of the night, watching the shadows the moons made play over the garden. She had no way of knowing if the man she dreamed of each night was summoned by the little candle or created in the depths of her mind, but he had been so thankful for this small gesture that Delenn felt compelled to keep the flame burning.

She lay in bed and focused on that flame until she fell asleep and the image of Lennier came to her, and the remembering began. He would touch her, kiss her, make love to her in ways she had secretly longed for when he was alive but been unable to ask for, and inevitably his touch would call forth some buried memory, some great or terrible thing that they had shared and that Delenn had caused herself to forget in order to continue on the path she had chosen.

As the memories unfolded, each one more painful than the next, her dreams became sweeter. The Lennier she had known in the past had been first shy and hesitant, then solemn and solicitous and protective, but never a bold or adventurous lover. The Lennier of her dreams was a different man, or rather, the man Lennier might have become if he had been allowed to love her for the woman she was.

In one dream, Lennier had tied her to their bed. It was a difficult thing to do on a bed with a central point of support and no real head or foot, but he managed. She watched Lennier go to the window and break off one of the icicles that dangled from the eaves. He turned to her and grinned, never with his lips but deep within his eyes. He bit off the sharp tip and cast it aside, then calmly sucked and licked the broken edge until it was rounded, never once letting his eyes leave hers.

Lying down beside her, Lennier kissed her with deep, careful thoroughness. The hand of his hands was melting the icicle, and the water dripped and fell onto Delenn's bare skin, making her twist against her bonds.

Lennier's smile was tiny, but unmistakable.

The tip of the icicle slid along Delenn's jawbone and traced the edge of her lips, daring her to take the cold shaft in her mouth and treat it as she would him. Lennier chuckled softly, but pulled the ice back before she could sharpen it again. Moaning his name, Delenn arched her lithe body into Lennier's hand as he drew the icy trail down her throat and across her chest, letting the tip linger on each tight nipple just long enough to make her bite her lip and shoot him a look that was more impotent fury than desire.

He simply grinned, leaned over and captured a nipple in his mouth, licking hot over the ice water and pinning Delenn beneath him so that the ice could travel lower. It teased at the creases of her thighs, leaving cold drops on her warm, wet flesh.

His mouth was out of reach of hers and her hands were bound; in desperation, Delenn thrust up. The melting-slick icicle slipped across her clitoris, sending jolts of frost through her veins. She thrashed and moaned beneath Lennier's weight.

He threw the dissolving thing away and proceeded to drink up the water it had left behind, setting the icy rivulets on fire, darting his tongue inside her for a brief instant before rising up and burying himself in her warmth.

This time the vision of Lennier lingered after their love-making was through, a solid and comforting weight on her chest, lips soft on her collarbone. Delenn lifted her hand to his back, felt the silky line of scales stiffening as his arousal faded, and the cerulean patches cooling under her palm. "What was this meant to help me remember?" she asked, her mind remarkably clear after such a coupling.

He laughed a little. "Only that it was something you wanted from me, once."

"If we are to go through the catalog of my sexual fantasies, you will still be visiting me when I am on my death bed." Her dry joke concealed a deeper worry. "Is this still only a dream?" she wanted to know. "It feels... you feel... so real."

"It is real. As real as you want it to be."

Delenn sat up. Lennier sat back on his thighs, regarding her solemnly. "What _are_ you?" she demanded.

A wide smile split his face. He took her hand and drew her index finger across his chest. Delenn's eyes widened to see the line of clear black ink trailing after her fingertip as though from the bristles of a soft brush.

"I am Minbar," he said, dark eyes dancing, "the same as you."

Delenn opened her eyes. The candle in the window had guttered. She lay staring into the solitary darkness of her bedroom, thinking.

* * *

_When she emerges from the chrysalis, she is surprised to find that Lennier has changed, too. His face is a bit more lean, the peaks of his crest sharper and more defined, and the wary reserve in his eyes that he had used to cover his insecurities has deepened into something more permanent. He is, she realizes with a pang, growing up._

_Together, he and Dr. Franklin carefully free her from her dry, crackling prison. The Human's face is a professional mask of calm, though he cannot hide the drank wonder from his eyes at the scope of her transformation. But Lennier is impassive. Delenn can discern little from his face or from his touch. Gentle though his hands are, they tell her nothing._

_After Franklin assures himself that her vital signs are good, he departs, sworn to secrecy and placated with a promise that Delenn will present herself for a full examination in a few days._

_Still quietly self-contained, Lennier helps Delenn to cleanse herself, to dress for the reception of the new captain._

_There is no time then for her to examine her new form, to see prophecy made manifest in her body. Later, after the events of the day are done, she stands before a mirror in her quarters, passing wondering hands over her diminished crest, the strange mass of soft fibers growing out from her head. Lennier stands in the background, keeping his own counsel._

_Delenn meets her reflection's gaze, and begins to disrobe._

_"I will go now."_

_"Please. Stay with me." His mirror image is visibly relieved by her request, and that lifts a little of her uneasiness._

_He stands behind her, a solid presence shielding her from the storm, if only for a little while longer. Slowly, while Delenn watches in the mirror, he passes his arms around her waist and pulls her back to rest securely against him. She covers his hands with her own as he patiently explores the geography of her new form; the soft, warm-colored skin gone softer with millions of tiny hairs, the more prominent hair hiding her genitalia, the larger, fuller breasts. Her nipples harden sharply when his palms pass over them, and she stops his hands, makes his fingers prod and tease the flesh gently until she trembles uncontrollably. He holds her while the shaking passes._

_Lennier kneels behind her. He rests his cheek on her tailbone; the sharper peaks of his crest scrape lightly at her back, now devoid of scales. Delenn shivers._

_"Are you cold?"_

_"I feel... exposed."_

_His breath is warm on her buttock and hip. Reassuring. "I am here," he soothes, running his palms up and down the outsides of her thighs. Delenn shifts, spreading her legs a little. She takes Lennier's hand and together they find and trace the line of her sex. It is harder to find, now, but they manage. In the mirror, she watches their joined hands slowly stroking, back to front, going a little deeper each time, leisurely and tender, just like the orgasm that hits her unexpectedly. She sways, but Lennier is there to steady her._

_Delenn turns around, so that she is looking down at Lennier and he is gazing up at her. Finally, she thinks, he is looking up. He pulls her down, lays her on her back on the carpet. The synthetic fibers tickle her hyper-sensitized flesh unbearably. He moistens his lean fingers with her wetness and dips carefully inside her. She feels different, he says, less tight, not as deep. She tightens around him experimentally and sees one of his fleeting moments of passion flicker across his face. He lifts his fingers to his lips, tells her she tastes different, and raises his hand to let her smell and taste herself on his skin._

_She wants to ask him, wants to know if he still finds her as beautiful and terrible as he did before. She needs him now, more than she knows, and the thought that he might no longer find her desirable frightens her. Delenn clings to his hand, pressing his damp palm to her face with both hands as she stares past him into unknowable futures._

_Lennier stretches out beside her, gently stroking her new hair with his free hand._

_"Are you afraid of me, Lennier? Still?"_

_He smiles. "Always." He pulls her close against his chest. Through his tunic, Delenn can hear the strong, steady beat of his heart. The heart is like the man. Steadfast. "It is right to fear the divine, to regard it with awe and reverence."_

_There is another word for that kind of holy fear. Delenn does not think of it then._

* * *

The next night, Delenn posted a guard outside her bedroom door, and another below her bedroom window. The guard outside the window, she simply told to watch for any suspicious movements on the property. To the guard outside her door, she gave more detailed instructions.

"Listen," she told the young Worker-caste Ranger. "In the morning, tell me what you have heard, no matter how strange or inappropriate."

The young woman was a little confused by Delenn's choice of words, but true to her training and her caste, she made no comment, only a respectful salute. "Yes, _Entil'zha_."

In the morning, she was careful not to disturb Delenn until after her morning contemplation. The watching of the rising sun was a sacrosanct ritual in the President's house. "There was a considerable amount of noise in the night," the Ranger reported obediently.

"What sort of noises?" Delenn asked, deliberately casual.

"Sex noises," the young woman said promptly, with only the faintest hint of embarrassment. It was why Delenn had put a Worker to watch her door, after all. "But it was only your voice."

Delenn nodded, apparently content with the information. She swore her to secrecy again and sent her on her business, still unsure of whether to be relieved or alarmed that her nightly visitor truly did seem to exist solely in her mind.

The guard she had placed outside her window had little to report. He thought he had seen someone moving in the lower terrace, near midnight, but a routine sweep from the house staff revealed nothing, not even an animal building its nest where it should not. "Still..."

"Yes."

He hesitated. "It may be nothing, but... In spite of there being no trace of anyone in the garden, I still felt as though there was someone there, watching."

"Watching you?"

"Not me, specifically. Only watching. But the sensation did go away, after a time."

Delenn questioned him a little more. From all that he said, the mysterious presence in her shrubbery seemed to have vanished at roughly the same time of night that Lennier's candle usually winked out.

* * *

_Their relationship is changing, it seems by mutual consent. In his unspoken way, Delenn feels that Lennier understands that their time as lovers is drawing to a close. She has a path to follow that she cannot swerve from, but if he walks with her by his own choice, then it is his sacrifice to make._

_Yet somehow they seem to draw ever closer to one another, even if their bodies meet with less frequency than before. He still sleeps in her bed, still prepares her meals and prays by her side and discusses legal policy and diplomatic procedure. Now too, he supports her when their people speak out against her, in public and in private. He listens to her rages and wipes away the tears she will allow no one else to see, and bears with her humiliation and confusion over the intricacies of her changed body._

_When she is unsure of using her bathroom's hygiene facilities by herself, he helps her, putting aside their species' instinctive dislike of water to strip off and join her in the shower._

_They both agree that bar soap is disgusting, too much like a lump of animal fat. The smell and texture of the liquid soap is better, and Delenn loves the feel of the mesh sponge rasping queerly up and down her bare spine._

_She is becoming used to her hair, and now that she knows how to take care of it, to even like the way it falls tumbling over her shoulders. She leans back against Lennier's chest and hums contentedly while he massages the foamy cleanser into her scalp. He does not like her hair, she thinks, not on its own. But so long as it is a part of her, he will endure it without complaint. His patience is a blessing._

_He releases her just long enough to let her rinse out the suds, then pulls her back towards him, wrapping his arms around her waist and nuzzling the spot where her neck meets her jaw. The water beating down on them will not last much longer, but for now it is like his arms, warm and enveloping. For a moment, Delenn imagines standing like this with Lennier in one of Minbar's rare hot springs, surrounded by soft water so close to their own body temperatures that they cannot tell where one ends and another begins._

_Lennier's hands roaming on her skin break her from her reverie. His fingers travel down her wet belly, to the hair on her pubic bone that they are both getting used to. He brushes across her clitoris for the first time and she gasps in surprise, arching back against him. He steadies her automatically, holding her hips with both hands._

_She can feel him, pressed against her buttocks, straining against the flat of his groin, needing only the touch of her hands to be released. She knows Lennier's body, knows how it will react to her, even though she has changed. It is a comforting knowledge. She has begun to study Human physiology, and what she has learned of their males' sexual organs does not please her. They are... untidy. They offend her sense of aesthetics. And of propriety; there is something insistent about the pictures she has seen. Unprotected and unimpeded, needing no help from a partner to come to readiness._

_Delenn imagines a Human standing where Lennier is, with his hands on her hips and his cock jutting out at her demandingly. The thought excites her a little, but not enough._

_Suddenly needing him, she turns and pulls his head down to hers, squeezing his groin._

_He presses her up against the wall of the shower, kissing and mouthing at her like a man too long denied, lifting her easily. His penis slips into her hand and in another moment he has her wrists pinned over her head and he is inside her, and he comes so quickly that Delenn laughs. "I think I must find you a wife soon," she murmurs, licking the corner of his mouth._

_He shoots her a look she cannot fathom, and then drops to his knees. Neither of them notices or cares that the water has stopped, that the warm moist air is fading away and causing the hairs on Delenn's skin to stand up._

_Her hands scrabble for purchase on the wet tiles as Lennier explores her genitalia more thoroughly, so different now from when she was fully Minbari in body as well as in mind—like the males, all her sexual organs had been internal. It is a new and strange thing for any part of her to be so accessible to Lennier's clever, curious hands and mouth._

_He pushes his fingers inside her, and closes his lips around the sensitive nub. Delenn pushes against his mouth, keening, and the way he drinks in her orgasm is like a sacrament._

* * *

She kept the guard outside at his post for three nights. Each night, he reported the same things: a shape in the lower garden, the sensation of a nonthreatening but watchful presence, and the discovery of absolutely nothing amiss. Even when the Ranger called another to take his place and went to investigate the spot himself, he found nothing save a few small instances of crushed ground cover. But they were so irregular, he could not put a cause to them.

"I saw nothing else, and heard nothing. No breathing, no heart beat, no rustle of clothing—only the sounds of plants in the wind, and the city beyond."

The city beyond. Tuzanor, the city of sorrows. The old proverb sprang to Delenn's mind, that to dream in the city of sorrows is to dream of a better future.

Her memories flow like water in spring; she does not need Lennier's help to remember now, only for the vision to hold her hand in the night and walk with her, as he had vowed always to do. Her dreams are softer, more as they were after her husband's death. There was a dream that she was a being of fire and Lennier one of ice, and when they mated they turned to vapor and water, warming their world after a long winter and bringing the spring rains.

And another, a shakingly moving thing that Delenn was certain was a vision, but of the past or the future, she could not say. She had been fully Human, dressed in Human clothes, sitting on a wooden bench in a park, on Earth in the summer. The warm air felt pleasant on her skin, not heavy and stifling as the summer months had felt on her previous visits. Beside her on the bench, half-turned to face her, was a man, a Human man with reddish-brown hair and dark eyes she could not fail to know. His clothes were old and simple, he wore spectacles, and he held a stringed instrument which he strummed now and then with the casualness of long familiarity.

There were children playing in the sunny grass. One of them, a girl with long red hair, ran up to Delenn and her companion, clamoring for a song and climbing into her lap. She snuggled against Delenn, her pale grey-green eyes open and trusting. Delenn's arms adjusted automatically around the small girl as though she had done this a thousand times before, and it came to her: This was her child. Their child.

Long years before, on Babylon 5, she had turned away from her chance to have a child with Lennier, and in her heart, she had always understood that he knew what she had done, and grieved with her for it. But despite her age, her days of child-bearing were not yet past. It came to Delenn, with the clarity that makes dreams begin to ripple and fade around the edges, that were Lennier alive today, she could make penance for her blasphemy.

She lay awake for a long time after that dream, eyes closed, holding onto it.

* * *

_He comes to her after their return from the **Valen'tha** , after she is no longer Satai, only Delenn. She does not send for him, does not ask him to come to her. But Lennier has learned to know when he is needed. "I will follow where you lead," he vows in renewal of his pledge, drawing her up from where she kneels before a single candle, barefoot, her head bowed in sorrowful meditation. He smooths back the long dark hair from her face. "To whatever end."_

_Delenn thinks she has never wanted him so much, but for once she can say nothing to make him want her, only curl her hands into his shoulders and lay her head on his chest. Lennier holds her, and they stand in the middle of the floor for a time, a lonely woman clinging to a solid and trustworthy rock in a turbulent sea._

_It is Lennier who finally makes the decision. He lifts her head and kisses her softly. His strong, warm hands are deft on the closure of her robes and her dress, and before disrobing himself, he lays her down against the bed and touches her, not to arouse, but to soothe. His smooth palms pass over her breasts, her stomach, her thighs, and then travel back up to frame her face, stroking her brow and cheeks. He nuzzles her neck, murmuring prayers against the pulse in her throat. He nudges her thighs apart with feather-light touches, kisses her lips slowly and slips his fingers inside her, stroking her, until she finally asks for what she needs._

_His naked body covers her like a blanket, keeping the hostile darkness away. His thrums are louder than usual, more eager, more urgent. When she touches his groin, he lets out a low moan, thrusting a little against her hand. She strokes his slick shaft as he comes out; he grinds down on her hips, rubbing against her sex, praying aloud—he is not normally so vocal or wanton. This display is for her. His prayers are to her._

_He slides into her so reverently that Delenn weeps. He cradles her against his chest, and his lips are soft on her wet face as he moves in her, murmuring benedictions._

_"I **love** you," he says devoutly, as he spills into her, and with all that has passed between them Delenn accepts those words into her heart as the reassurance of a dear friend. It is only later, too late, that she recognizes them for the declaration they are._

* * *

Officially, Lennier was killed in the Telepath War, in the same explosion that killed Lyta Alexander and many of the rogues fighting for their freedom. Lyta's body was recovered; John had made very sure that she was cremated before any unscrupulous Earthforce scientists could lay hands on her remains. But Lennier's body had never been found.

Delenn read the reports again. He had definitely been _present_ at the bombing, but there were many conflicting accounts as to whether he had been able to escape the building in time. Some witnesses said they had seen him flee to safety; others claimed he had been trapped inside with no way to free himself and insisted that they leave him behind. She could believe either action of Lennier. He had been very good at cheating death, even while willingly courting it to save others.

But without his remains, the only person who could tell her the truth was Lennier himself.

She lit the candle for him and placed it carefully in her bedroom window, and that night she did not go to sleep, but instead wrapped herself in a blanket and sat slightly to the side of the glass. Delenn recited old principles she had learned at Draal's knee as a child, focusing not on the steady flame but on the indistinct image of the garden beyond.

She thought she saw... something, out there among the trees. She could not say what she might have seen, and the routine nightly ground check turned up nothing. Nevertheless, Delenn felt the presence keeping watch over her bedroom window until nearly dawn.

* * *

_Just as her relationship with Lennier is changing, so are the emotions between herself and the captain. The Human is falling in love with her, and to her surprise, it is easy to return those feelings._

_Lennier, ever cautious of her as he is trusting of prophecy, does not like it. But she sees his behavior only as concern for her well-being, never as jealousy, a mistake she will regret for the rest of her life._

_When Delenn begins the sleep-watching rituals, Lennier removes himself from her bed. As much as she will miss him, that is only right. He has quarters of his own, even if they have been little used since she first took him as a lover, and a bed of his own to bring others to, as a young Minbari should. He can have the privacy that being her aide and confidante has denied him thus far._

_He does nothing of the kind. The bed in his quarters is used simply for sleeping, as though he is wary of bringing another person there, lest Delenn require him, and he keeps himself aloof, untouchable... in the hope, she realizes sadly, that she might come to him._

_She thinks about it, many times, missing the surety of his hands and the utter trust that they could place in one another. She has only glimpsed his darknesses, but he knows hers entirely, and it will be a long time, if ever, that Delenn can show those parts of herself to the husband she has willingly chosen._

_But she goes to him only once, during the civil war when they are waiting for the surrender at Varenn'i. She climbs into his bed silently, curling against his side, nuzzling her face into his throat, needing to feel him again before the ordeal that is coming. Lennier's arm creeps around her waist, but he says nothing. Gently, Delenn slips a hand beneath his nightclothes, touches him. Traces a finger along his slit and then slides it inside to coax him out. He thrums, very softly; the surgery to repair the damage to his lungs is still new and raw. She brings him out and strokes him until her hand and his trousers are sticky with his emissions. She stretches her neck up to kiss him._

_"No, Delenn. No."_

_His arm retreats and he rolls over, turning away from her. Delenn goes back to her own bed, and grieves for what she has lost._

* * *

On the same day every year, Delenn excused herself from her duties for the Alliance and the Rangers to visit the ancient temple of _Darel Felisilae_ in Tuzanor, the ancestral home of the Third Fane of Chu'domo, to attend the annual reading of the lists of the dead, and hear Lennier's name, along with all the others of his clan who had gone beyond the veil in that year. It was her custom afterward to walk the halls of the place where Lennier had grown up in order to feel his presence, to be closer to him in the only way had once thought possible.

She never told his clan the ultimate cause of Lennier's departure, only that he had served her well, brought them great honor, and for reasons of his own, felt himself unable to return home. His parents were dead, he had no siblings, and his clan-leaders were as inscrutable as he had become, towards the end. Whether or not they believed Delenn's story (there were always rumors, especially on Minbar), they accepted it. After the Telepath War, they counted Lennier's name among the dead and included it in their prayers for the souls not yet reborn to a new life.

It was now twenty-one years since he was declared dead, and today she had come to _Darel Felisilae_ to be present for the last reading.

"Let the knowledge of their sins fade, for they have been made anew. Let the pain of their passing fade, for they have been reborn in joy. Let the memory of their names fade, for they have been given new names."

Delenn bowed her head along with the members of Lennier's clan, praying for his soul to come through into his new life whole and clean. But under the hood of her robe, she mouthed the silent words of the pagan mantra, and refused to forget him again.

* * *

_When he tells Delenn his intention to leave and join the Rangers, she knows she loves him, by the gaping wound in her heart that forms at his words, suddenly and without warning. And she knows that he loves her. He has said it before, but now she knows it for certain, as she should have known before. His dark eyes smolder as he speak of earning her respect._

_"You always had my respect," says Delenn softly._

_"Yes, in most ways. But I only wish to add a few more, to become more of what you may want me to be; more of what you may find... My decision is made."_

_No one is under any illusions as to why he chooses to go, after so many years spent at Delenn's side, but they are her friends and his. They understand and say nothing, only wish Lennier luck, success and safety. Delenn lies and tells her husband it has nothing to do with him, and John accepts that lie because he wants to, because it is easier to accept than the truth._

_He comes back between training cycles, for the Day of the Dead. He will not tell her what he experienced, but it is clear it gave him no peace. Lennier finishes his training and Delenn calls him back to Babylon 5, to be her eyes and ears. He walks open-handed into the danger she sends his way, hoping only to purge them both of what they still feel._

_There is no denying that there are still feelings between them, inappropriate to their positions and incapable of being removed, even by death. "I love you," Lennier tells her, when they think they are about to die._

_Delenn's smile feels like a knife across her heart. "I know."_

_Lennier wants to go and cannot leave; Delenn knows he should go, and cannot bring herself to let him. And the result is tragedy, as it always had to be._

_"There are moments," she tells John after he has run away, speaking of herself as well as of Lennier, "when we all become someone else. Something other than what we are. It takes only a moment. But we spend the rest of our lives looking back at that moment in shame. For one instant, out of a lifetime of service, he became his own worst instincts."_

* * *

Delenn snapped herself out of her reminiscence. That day, she did not need help to remember.

Instead, she went home. She went into her office and rummaged around in her desk, pushing aside treaties and memos, until she found what she was looking for. She took the old bottle of ink and a soft brush and went into the garden, to the spot where her guards said the watching presence lingered. On the smooth silvery bark of an _ardel'tha_ tree, she wrote the old mantra, Lennier's lesson to her, in her strong, steady hand.

_No one is truly dead until he is forgotten._

That night she sent the house staff away, and told the guards to remain away from the lower garden below the back terrace, no matter what they heard.

Her hands as they lit the candle were steady and sure. For a long time, Delenn prayed before the unshuttered window, holding the candle in her cupped hands and taking strength from its light and warmth. She prepared for bed with care and deliberation, again, in full view of the window. If there truly was a presence in the garden below, she wanted it to know in no uncertain terms that she was aware of it.

When she fell asleep and began to dream, Lennier was waiting for her, not in the garb of a Ranger, but in the simple clothes he had worn when he was young. His expression was calm, steady, trusting. Delenn took his face between her hands and kissed him. "I love you," she breathed.

Lennier smiled, and gratefully fell back onto the bed.

Delenn took her time disrobing him, soothing away with her lips all the old wounds she had inflicted on him. She traced holy symbols on his chest, words of law and scripture, watched them flow beneath her hand with an otherworldly vibrancy. She understood now. She was the law and he was the text. She was the doctrine, he the embodiment. She the dream, he the ideal. "We are Minbar, you and I, together."

"Always," Lennier vowed, gripping her hips as she moved over him, "always."

They came together, peacefully, with her hair forming a dark shroud around both their faces. "Thank you," Delenn whispered, soft against his lips.

His smile lingered in her mind as she woke. The candle still burned in the window; it was many hours until dawn. Delenn dressed in the darkness. She slipped through the silent, empty house and onto the back terrace, descending on bare feet into the garden below. The ground was covered in a soft blue-green plant; its millions of tiny leaves tickled her ankles as she made her way purposefully towards the _ardel'tha_ grove. "Lennier," she called softly, unable to see anything among the shadows except the tall, slender silver trees. "Lennier."

For a moment, all was silence. And then, life breathed in the shadows, and a solid shape emerged, marked and battered but otherwise whole. The moonlight glinted off a crest long since weathered into full adulthood, a scarred hand leaning against the tree she had inscribed, and a shimmering _isil'zha_ jewel pinned at his breast. The figure bowed. " _Entil'zha_." She saw him swallow once, hard. "Delenn."

She came to him, almost unwilling to doubt her senses. "Are you real?" she whispered, her voice hoarse, her fingers digging into the worn brown uniform. "Are you alive?"

He smiled, a tired little half-twist of his lips. "Perhaps."

With a certainty that might have been preordained, Delenn pulled his head down and kissed him.

Of all the questions she could have asked, the "where have you beens" and "what have you been doings," the only one that seemed to matter at all was "How can you be here? We were told you died during the war."

"I did, or tried to, many times. But I kept failing." His arms around her were leaner than ever, all muscle and bone, with a slight tremble that might have been due to injury but might have only been shock. "It appears one cannot simply die when one wants to, no matter how much one might crave or deserve it."

She traced the deep lines that age and trouble had carved around his mouth. "I always hoped you might come back," she said, letting her shame come. "Even after everything I did to you, I always believed... I thought you might return after John..."

A muscle in his jaw twitched. Slowly, Lennier shook his head. "That would not have been right. After what I nearly did... No."

"And now? Why?" She stepped closer into his embrace, not wanting him to misunderstand, wanting him to stay. Wanting him.

"It was time," he said simply. "People look for the souls of the dead in the newly-born, not in the old ones who are already living. My face will have gone from the memories of my clan, and I had to make sure you were well now that..." He trailed off, unable to finish his thought, and looked down at their joined hands. "I wondered sometimes if it would be better not to come back," Lennier said at last. "If you would rather just forget me."

Delenn wanted to cry, wanted to hit him, wanted to order him down on his knees, to beg for her mercy. Instead, she simply said "No," and kissed him again.

They stood there in the grove for what seemed like centuries, lips moving slowly on lips, mouths opening shyly, hands touching one another in chaste, courtly ways, each afraid to take the step forward that had already set them on such a disastrous path once before. "I love you," Delenn said, meaning each word and breath of it.

It was enough for Lennier, too weary with wandering to struggle anymore. He gathered her close and lay her down on the ground. Her body crushed the soft plants and released a cloud of heady fragrance, smoky and alive, that mixed with his growing thrums and intoxicated her. His callused hands parted her robes and laid her body bare, and for a long moment Lennier hovered over her, drinking in the sight of her naked form in the moonlight. "I am not a dream, Lennier," she teased gently over the lump in her throat, "I promise."

His shaky smile was proof enough that he didn't quite believe her, not yet. Gently, Delenn drew a hand down his body, from his throat to his groin, massaging him through his trousers. She coaxed him to lay down beside her and put his hands on her back, encouraging him without words to stroke the hot blue pools around her spine while she tugged his threadbare uniform away. She kissed him with soft lips, stroked his growing erection with soft hands. He thrust unselfconsciously into her touch, holding her close.

Moving slowly, she straddled him, easing his slickness inside her body and letting out a long, low moan of contentment. She pressed her breast to his chest, all the while passing her hands over his taut body, more warrior than priest now, learning the new scars. Lennier's eyes were closed; she saw tears glistening on his cheeks and moved her lips from his throat to his face. "Look at me," Delenn urged softly.

Lennier obeyed as he always had, and in his deep brown eyes Delenn could see everything, the awe and the fear, the reverence, the lust and the love and the worship that had all been melted together so tightly as to be inseparable. Everything he had ever given her, and so much more she had never thought to look for or been able to understand. One hand gripped her hip lightly; the other reached up to brush a strand of hair from Delenn's face.

She turned her face into his hand and kissed his roughened palm.

He was not able to outlast her as he once had, but it hardly mattered. He was here, real and solid and warm in her arms. He had made love with her and come inside her, and not vanished afterward. Delenn lay her head down over his heart; Lennier pulled his cloak over them to use as a blanket. He slept. She did not. She lay listening to his heartbeat for the rest of the night, and the sound of it accompanying the sunrise was, at that moment, the most beautiful sound in the world.

Reluctantly, she let Lennier rise and resume his uniform. Then, as of old, Lennier helped her to dress, shaking out as much of the wrinkles and foliage from her robes as he could, laying the garments over her shoulders and fastening them with tender care.

Delenn gripped his hands as they finished their task. "Stay with me. Please."

A little of the old intense fire flared in his eyes, but he shut it down quickly. His lips tightened, and he looked away from her open longing and the hope of a dream neither of them were sure they deserved.

She held his hands cupped in hers. Long, sensitive fingers, the hands of a scholar, but kept so long in the guise of a soldier. His hands were worn now, scarred and callused. Delenn kissed his hands, clasping them tight against her heart.

Finally, he voice the question it had taken him twenty-five years to work up the courage to ask. "Will you ever be able to forgive me?"

Delenn touched his face, feeling the years apart in his skin, and mourning for them. "Can you forgive me?" she returned. She waited for his reply.

He looked at her for a long moment, with all the depths in his eyes that she had never been able to fathom. He broke away from her touch, turned and walked away a few paces... stopped.

Lennier turned back to face her, and held out his hand. "They're waiting for us," he said.

* * *

Minbari do not believe in ghosts in the same way Humans do. For a soul to be barred from the cycle of death and rebirth was punishment for a crime so heinous, the Minbari no longer had a word for it. So Delenn could not believe that Lennier was a ghost, even if his clan wondered at his timely return.

But he was not the same man who ran from her twenty-one years before, terrified of what his all-consuming love for her had nearly driven him to do. And he himself was sometimes unsure of whether he was alive or only a shade made solid.

It did not matter, in the end. Delenn welcomed him back into the fold of the _anla'shok_ and back into her bed, not as student and lover, but as husband and mate.

Lennier balked, at first. "I should not be rewarded for what I have done."

Delenn squeezed his scarred hands. He had promised to tell her, some day, the story behind those scars. "Nor should I. And yet, here we are."

He could not argue with her logic or her rhetoric, though he had the confidence of one who has gone to the sea and returned and no longer had any reluctance to argue with her on other points.  
The older Rangers rejoiced to have him back; the younger ones treated him with careful awe and respect. Ranger One mistrusted him at first, but then, Susan had looked to John as the brother she had lost. She was the only person Delenn ever told the reason for Lennier's departure, and Susan Ivanova did not forgive easily. In time, worn down by Lennier's patient acceptance of her dislike, she put it aside. "I'm too old to go on hating people for stupid mistakes they made without thinking," she said, in her gruff way.

Delenn never told her son about the day Lennier tried to kill his father, but for all that, she was not sure David didn't already know. He fought alongside Lennier and called him 'sir,' gave his blessing to their marriage and was happy for them, all the while treating Lennier with a stern calmness that seemed to say, "Do not disappoint me." And Lennier accepted the unspoken warning. Sometimes, sitting with her son and looking into the clear grey-green eyes he had inherited from her, she saw the same unfathomable depths, the same eerie and patient understanding, the almost-prophetic wisdom that was so at odds with his young face. Much as she would always love her late husband, David did not get that look from John. Both David and Lennier were bound to her, to protect her, driven on by a love neither of them asked for and could not escape.

On their wedding night, Lennier took the ink and brush and wrote on her bare skin. _We live for the One, we die for the One._ And he added a new phrase: _We are reborn for the One._ "Lennier," Delenn chided, old and jaded now and able to see the danger signs, "I am not some pagan goddess. You should not worship me."

He pinned her wrists above her head, rough and gentle at the same time, and took her quickly, purposefully smearing the thick, wet ink between them. "Without my faith in you to guide me," he growled softly, releasing her hands to wrap his arms around her, "I would have been dead years ago. I will worship you if I please." And Delenn was no longer hypocrite enough to deny him. He made love to her as he was, a man of flesh and a man long denied, but still reverently, careful of her newly-tender breasts and the growing curve of her belly.

He was the Lennier of her past and the Lennier of her dreams, blended together. His time alone among the stars had beaten him into a new shape; the form was different, weathered and wounded, and the dark intensity that tormented him as a young man had eroded, but the material was the same, as strong and sure as ever.


End file.
